


The Same Coin

by bladespark



Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Genre: Ghosts, M/M, Shameless Smut, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 19:00:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19257256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bladespark/pseuds/bladespark
Summary: Corwin and Eric hated each other for many reasons.  But at least some of the hatred had its roots in the intimacy, rejection, and shame that revolved around one specific night, long, long ago.  Corwin had long since put that night out of his mind, and what did it matter, anyway?  Eric was dead and gone.  When one of his distant kin discovers something new about the pattern, though, Corwin realizes that those who walk it don't necessarily have tostaydead.





	The Same Coin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PatternWalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatternWalker/gifts).



> Inspired by PatternWalker's wonderful and extensive Amber stories, as well as by Zelazny's own work.
> 
> Unlike all the ponyfic I've been uploading lately, this story is brand new!

I lay in my bed, in the calm before the storm, and could not sleep.

It might not be the calm before the storm, of course. True peace might be here at long last. Many things had been settled, in ways that might be thought to solve old problems, at least as much as they could be solved. Oncoming tempest or not, though, few of the remaining problems were mine any longer. Those of Amber belonged to Random, and those of Chaos belonged to my son, Merlin.

A strange thought. I had refused a throne, but he had taken one on his own terms. Well, I had once tried the same, though my terms had been quite muddled at the time.

But contemplation of rule, or of matters still unsolved that the kings of Chaos and Amber might yet have to settle was not what kept me awake. What kept me awake was a tale I'd heard just that evening, of Benedict's latest paramore, a woman out of the same shadow earth where I myself had once wandered nameless. She had walked the pattern, proving the blood of Amber in her, but something more than that had taken place.

She had summoned a pattern ghost.

I knew them well by now, of course. I'd met my own, though telling that story would involve telling too many other stories, so I will say only that meeting yourself, a person who is you in both body and mind, is quite peculiar and leave it at that.

Until today I had thought that pattern ghosts were made only at the whim of the pattern itself, created by existential forces far beyond those any human, or any Amberite for that matter, could command.

Now, though, I knew otherwise. I knew that a strong enough will, sufficiently focused, as one walked through the pattern, could summon one. Mala had walked with Benedict's name a focusing chant on her lips, and he had come. I knew I could sometimes suffer from hubris, but I was nevertheless confident that I could duplicate her feat. Which meant, of course, that I could summon up anyone who had ever walked the pattern, if I so desired. 

Including people who were long since dead and gone.

Several faces immediately sprang to mind. Some would be easier to face than others. Dad...I still didn't know if I wanted to talk to him at all. I'd mostly laid his ghost to rest, but part of that had been setting aside the father I thought I'd known after discovering he was somebody both more noble and more human than I ever could have believed. The idea of speaking with him again, of getting to know the man I'd briefly known as Ganelon rather than the distant, cold icon of King Oberon had a certain allure, yet what would come of it? I came perilously close to hating him still, yet paradoxically I had also forgiven him. Would talking to him change any of that? And for the better or the worse? Perhaps I would only find that Ganelon had been the lie, and careless Oberon the truth.

Perhaps I'd be ready to find out someday, but I didn't feel up to it right now.

Another face had arrived in my mind even before Dad's, but I could barely even think about its familiar features. I was not ready for her. Not now, and probably not for a very, very long time. I'd loved her for untold centuries, always close, always just beyond reach, and then I'd lost her in a single instant, and the tantalizing hints of her in my son's story tormented my dreams nearly every night. No. I could not summon up her ghost.

But there was another face, another relationship that was in some was simpler than that with either father or sister, even if it had its own strange complications. 

My brother. 

A word that held a wealth of every feeling from loathing to respect to near-indifference, depending on which brother in question I brought to mind. In this case I had first idolized him, then hated him, and finally come to regard him with something that might perhaps be called respect.

The hatred, I now recognized, had been largely because we were too alike. Two sides of the same coin, two coins struck in the same die. I remembered, suddenly, paired moments. One, the day he'd lain dying, when he'd said that he wished I had been at his side, that I was better than any other of us save Benedict. I remembered the way some part of me had soared in that moment, in spite of all else that should have weighed my soul down. I remembered too the night we'd dueled in the library. I had thought, then, that he was magnificent, and it was a shame that I must hate him as I did, else I could have loved him.

Love...

I opened my eyes finally, giving up on sleep, and heaved a sigh as I looked up at the ceiling. Love was a word that could mean many things. I did love some of my brothers, though I still trusted most of them not even as far as I could throw them, for I was strong and could throw a man quite a distance. I had loved one of my sisters in a way that was...not brotherly, but that thought led nowhere but old pain. I had loved Eric once, long, long ago, in a very different way.

The Eric the pattern would hold, just at the end of the long adolescence of a son of Amber, would be an Eric very close in time to the Eric I'd so strangely loved, though the troubles between us had begun before he took the pattern.

Did I want to see that Eric again?

Why ask the question? The answer was in the asking. Of course I did, or I would have pushed him too aside rather than dwelling on what we had once shared.

I got out of bed and dressed myself. I wasn't going to be able to sleep tonight, so I might as well go and do something about the ghosts and shadows that were currently haunting me. Perhaps I could fully lay one of them at last.

I laughed softly at my turn of mental phrase as I walked through the halls, drawing a look from a patrolling guard, but no more than a brief one. I was one of the princes of Amber, and we were all known to be quite mad. Nothing so small as a laugh in the night from one such as I would shake the composure of the men who stood guard here.

I descended the long stair to the dungeons, and as always I felt an atavistic chill root at the base of my spine as I passed the mouth that led to the cells where I had once been held, blind and helpless. I pushed it aside. I had long ago forgiven Eric for that particular crime, at least as much as it was in me to forgive. I doubted if I would tell his pattern ghost, his younger self, about it. I might tell him that he had worn Amber's crown, if briefly. No doubt that would please him. It would have pleased me, at that point in my life.

Eventually I came to the room where it lay, the great pattern of Amber, or its nearest shadow, at least. I regarded its cool blue glow, its delicate tracery of zig-zags and swirling curves, all making something approximating a spiral, which ended in an open circle at the center.

I set down my lantern and went to the place where the broad, glowing maze of it began.

I had walked the pattern more than most. Generally one walked it only once and never again, but various circumstances had caused me to traverse that glowing path multiple times, so it held no fear for me now. Still, my heart beat just a little bit faster as I set one booted foot on the line. Sparks immediately rose around it as the pattern's strange energies flowed into me, making the hair on my arms stand on end.

I pushed that sensation aside and instead focused on my purpose here. _Eric,_ I said within my mind. _Eric, Eric, Eric._ Elder brother, playmate, rival; always there above me, always just a little bit ahead of me, always just a little bit better than me. Even as children we had not always gotten along, yet in those days it wasn't because I hated him, it was because he regarded me as a nuisance, the way elder brothers have always regarded younger.

_Eric, Eric, Eric._ Our childhood ran through my mind. He was quite a few years older, but the scions of Amber do not age quite as mortal men, and so we'd both had a long childhood together in our father's court. Benedict was enough older than I to be fully adult in even my earliest memories, but I could recall an Eric who was only just taller, only just more mature than myself.

I had sometimes been jealous of him, but in those earliest recollections I'd mostly idolized him. He was everything I'd wanted to be, and so I'd imitated him shamelessly. I had also pestered him shamelessly, following him around at every opportunity, trying to be included in his games, trying to be noticed, to be liked, to be praised by him even if I might never be praised by our father.

_Eric, Eric, Eric._ When had his air of vague annoyance at a nuisance of a younger brother changed? Some time past puberty, somewhere a little bit before the full stature of adulthood. I'd been old enough, then, to begin noticing women, certainly. Every now and then, though, rare but not that rare, I'd noticed a man. Such things are known and thought little of in Amber. And why should anything be thought of them? We were something like gods, or so I thought in those days, young and foolish as I was, but I think we all thought it until Chaos came calling and taught us otherwise. We could do as we pleased, and that included bedding men or women as we liked. Certainly my father bedded whoever caught his eye, with little or no consideration for the consequences, though he seemed to be inclined only towards women.

I yanked my mind away from him and returned it to Eric, repeating my mantra of his name as I pushed through the first veil, and through my memories of childhood into something that verged on adulthood. Eric as I'd first noticed him in _that_ way, a bare inch taller than I was then as I blossomed towards adulthood, and still the object of my admiration. It was merely that said admiration became tinged with something more than a desire for an older brother's praise and attention.

_Eric, Eric, Eric,_ I repeated in my mind, seeing him then, himself also not quite grown to the man he would become, but showing the bare bones of it, his strong, tall body already athletic from sword training, his chin showing a still-patchy beard that he obviously wasn't happy with when he didn't shave.

Eric, who had already begun finding his colors, black and ruby red, and who held himself with the utter confidence of a man who was prince of all the universe, though I knew now that a yawning gulf of uncertainty and insecurity likely lay beneath it. Then I had seen only the confidence, only the fire in his icy blue eyes.

What he had seen in me I wasn't sure. Perhaps he had some appreciation for the way I idolized him. Perhaps he saw the man I was growing into myself, still a little gangly and quite rough around the edges, but I must not have been unhandsome to him even so.

He was not my first. But he was my first male lover. As I worked my way towards the second veil, fighting a growing resistance all the time, I remembered that night. His body had been strong, lean yet heavy above me. I had spoken his name as I found fulfillment, and he had gasped out mine too, with a tone that had seemed to set my very soul alight.

I felt as if the same fire burned in my veins now, recalling that moment as the pattern sent electric fire through me. I moved slowly, slowly as I pushed through the second veil, my mind full of Eric's remembered touch, my effort striving towards him, his name now whispered out loud, hovering on my lips as passionately as it had on that night.

Then I was through, the world moving around me as the sparks lessened and the way became easier for a time, though the hardest part still lay ahead. The hardest memories did as well. I had thought, at the time, that our night together had somehow poisoned him against me, that he regretted it, and regretted me. I thought now that perhaps some other moment had instead. He had ever been sensitive to our father's words. I knew, later, that he'd suffered greatly from the declaration that no fratricide would ever take the throne, when it was thought that he'd killed me. How might he have taken one of Oberon's occasional rants against sibling incest?

I wondered, sometimes, if our father had some dark shadow of it in his own life, to care so much about such a thing, when the royal family of Amber held to so few taboos. I knew of no siblings to King Oberon, but I had lately learned that my count of my own siblings was missing more than a few, so I might have aunts and uncles unmet. At the time I had not paid much attention to Oberon's words on the subject. In my mind my liaison with Eric was something other, something unrelated to incest, for that was to do with brothers and sisters, at least to hear what my father dwelt on. Later, much later, when the fey little girl who was then running about underfoot began her own blossoming into adulthood, I learned to feel more strongly about my father's words, but at the time I had not taken them much to heart.

But perhaps Eric had. Perhaps that was why he scorned me thereafter, a thing that I believe planted the first true seeds of our hatred towards one another. We had always been rivals, as brothers always were I think, but it turned bitter after that. My own throwing of "bastard" at him and my father's occasional favoring of me had probably not helped at all, but his hard rejection when I sought a second night had been the beginning of it, I think now, even if I had not put the word "hatred" on it at the time.

I realized that I had almost stopped moving. The forces that I was striving against were strong here, but that very strength was why they could provide what I sought. "Eric, Eric, Eric" I said again, and took another step. I struggled against the pattern, body and mind throwing themselves against it, body seeking to move just one more step in the face of impossible resistance, mind seeking what I wanted, what I _needed_ from the pattern: my brother, Eric.

As I took a second step, then a third, whispering his name all the while, a tracery of light and shadow formed before more, standing on the pattern's line with me. A moment later the tracery was solid, a figure, indistinguishable from reality, who stood in the blue-white patternlight.

He was a memory from days long gone, just bearded, a few years past that singular night, his blue eyes wary as they regarded me. He no doubt recognized me, but I was visibly older than the youth I'd been when last this Eric had seen me.

"Corwin?" he said.

"Yes, brother," I returned, but I did not halt my striving. I had attained my desire, yet to come to a halt on the pattern was to risk being unable to finish it. I had done that as well, of course, when I'd fought Brand on the primal pattern, but that again is another story entirely, and I did not wish to try that difficult task now. So I slowly took another step forward.

Eric looked around as he took one back to match mine. He did so without effort, but then he wouldn't have to work against the pattern, he was part of it. "I am somewhat puzzled by the situation in which I find myself."

"I imagine you would be. The last thing you recall is walking the pattern, is it not?"

"Yes. I felt triumph, and then I went forth into shadow, making my own kingdom to rule there. But... I do not recall the going, only that I meant to go. What happened?"

"Many things. You went. What you did there I know not, but I can tell you that you returned, unsatisfied with shadow." I smiled then. "I can tell you also that you wore the crown of Amber for a time, and wielded the Jewel of Judgment in Amber's defense."

He looked surprised, but there was a gleam in his eye. "Truly?"

"Truly."

"And what of you?"

Almost I wanted to tell him the full of it, of the evils he had done to me, of the evils I had meant to do to him, but instead I said, "We had our conflicts, but in the end we laid them to rest, in the last days of your reign."

He considered that. "I thought you hated me."

"And I thought you hated me. Yet before that..." I swallowed, took another glacially slow step forward. "Eric... I'm sorry."

He gaped at me. That was certainly the last thing that my younger self, proud and stubborn, would have said. Even if he'd known what I knew now, young Corwin would have been full of righteous anger at his unjust treatment.

I merely smiled and took another glacially slow step forward. I was nearly to the end, and I needed to say what must be said before that point. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for every time I called you 'bastard', I'm sorry for every attempt to make you look lesser, I am sorry for every time I flaunted some bit of Father's attention in your face. I was young, and proud, and I thought you hated me, but all the same, I am sorry. Once we had something beautiful between us, and I poisoned it every bit as much as you did. So I'm sorry."

"I... Corwin, I..." His princely confidence had faltered for a moment, but he swiftly gathered it again. "I'll admit, those are the last words I ever thought to hear from your lips."

"When you, the other you, the you that left the pattern and went on to be dissatisfied with shadow, lay dying, you told me that you thought I was the best of us, save Benedict, of course." I gave him a smile at that.

He barked a harsh laugh. "Of course."

"Have you felt that way all this time? Do you feel that way now? Don't let anything Father might have said color your words. He has no power here any longer."

He blinked at me, then nodded. "I suppose if my own head has worn the crown, he would not. He must not have for some time, for his bastard to have the throne." His voice was bitter at that, but I only nodded. He was both wrong and right at the same time, but the full story would be too long in the telling for the scant few steps that remained before the pattern's end.

I took another of them, my foot pressing slowly forward against impossible resistance before once more finding the line. Eric backed from me again, but I noticed now, through sparks almost to my shoulders, that he wasn't walking, he was simply moving back, carried by the pattern itself, no doubt.

An eternity passed as I worked my way through another step, giving Eric time to formulate a response. Finally he said, "I suppose I have felt that way all this time, yes. Ever since..." He gave a little cough, showing a flash of the uncertainty I knew ran at least as deep in him as it ever had in me. "Ever since I started to notice you. It could have been something, I think, but Father..."

"Father was careless in many ways," I said softly, sadly. "Careless of our feelings not least among them. He was careless with Amber too, more than you ever knew."

Eric snorted. "The old bastard," he spat. "It takes one to know one, and he was one if there ever was."

I refrained from saying what I knew of our mutual parent's own peculiar parentage and only nodded. "He was."

Eric's face softened, as much as it could, and he said, "I still hate you Corwin. A moment's apology can't undo that."

"I know. I'm sorry for that as well. I still wanted to make it, though. I wanted to lay your ghost."

"You speak as if I'm dead, I notice."

"I'm afraid you are," I said with a small shrug.

"How?"

"Slain by the forces of Chaos, defending Amber from destruction, in the final days of your reign as king of Amber."

"And I suppose Amber was in danger because of my bungling rule," he said bitterly, letting an uncharacteristic glimpse of his inner fears slip.

"No! If anything it was my fault, for I provided an unwitting opening for the enemy, but it was mostly Brand who betrayed us to Chaos. He too is dead now."

"I see. And...Deirdre?"

I looked away. 

He sighed. "Our poor sister. I always felt more brotherly towards her than to any of my other siblings." He regarded me for a time, then sighed again. I was now to the final steps, and it was hard to focus on his face as I pressed forward against what seemed like the weight of a world. But I heard, the words clear despite the crackling sparks, "I never was one for trusting brothers, but the news you bring seems too strange to be an invention, and I don't know what you would gain by deceiving a ghost. Your apology seems real, also, so I suppose I will accept it."

I wanted to nod, or to reply, but I could barely register the words as I strained to complete the pattern. I could not stop here, I might well be killed by the forces I strove against. Sparks were all around me and I couldn't even see Eric, but I heard his voice again as the universe tore me down and rebuilt me.

"Corwin, if we are making confessions... I... What I felt for you was not brotherly at all. I feel it still. Father's condemnation, your hate, my own hate, they were never enough to burn it out of me. I think that's why the hate lingers so."

I mourned and soared. I wept and caroled. My heart delighted that he loved and despaired that he hated. I did none of these things in truth, though, but only strove, strove, strove, being unmade and made again while joy and sorrow and passion sang through me until finally, finally, my foot came down past the end of the pattern's glowing line. 

I had done it again.

I turned around, finding Eric behind me now, standing on the pattern still. "My hate lingered too," I told him, "but it has been centuries for me. Admittedly for some of that my hate was...ah...increased by what you did to me when you became king."

He gave me a rather grim smile. "If was was king, I'm surprised you're yet alive."

"I think your older self lost some of his hate eventually," I said. I told him nothing of my blinding. That had been, strangely, an act of mercy, though I had not thought it such at the time.

"Perhaps I can put some of it aside myself," he said, with another soft sigh. "The world is not what I thought it at all."

"No, it's not what I thought it in those days either," was my gentle reply.

He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes sweeping up and down me. I knew I wasn't really in peak form. I'd begun to recover from my long imprisonment in the Courts of Chaos, but I hadn't really been training in the days since. Perhaps I should have been. Still, I knew my clothes, in my usual black and silver, draped well, and my hair was tidy, my face recently shaved. I had my silver rose at my throat, but Grayswandir, my sword, was not at my side. Eric, though, bore his blade, no doubt prepared to depart directly into shadow from his pattern walk.

"So what comes now?" he asked. "I have a sense that I cannot leave the pattern."

"Not as you are now, no. I have an idea about how to change that, though."

"Oh?"

"Yes. The blood of Amber has power, and pattern ghosts, which is what you are, are known vampires. I intend to spill a little of my own for you."

There was a sharpening of his gaze, and he licked his lips once, briefly. "That should only puzzle me, yet instead it fills me with a strange desire. The blood of Amber, your blood, would be good."

I nodded and drew my dagger.

A quick slash across my forearm got a red ribbon flowing, and when I held it out to Eric, he took my arm in his hands. His grip was oddly immaterial, a thing of sparks and static. His lips were static as well as he pressed them to the cut and drank, but as he began to draw in my blood I felt their touch grow more solid, more real, and soon they seemed like merely mortal hands.

He kept drinking, and I waited for a time, but as I felt a hint of light-headedness, I realized he wasn't going to stop. "Eric."

Still he kept drinking, his lips pressed tightly to my wrist.

"Eric!" I yanked my arm roughly from his grip, succeeding only because he hadn't been braced against such an action. 

He blinked at me for a moment, lips stained crimson, then flushed faintly. "Forgive me. It was...good. Very good."

"I bet." I tried not to chuckle, knowing how little he liked being laughed at. "But now that you're a little more solid, try stepping off the pattern."

He nodded and did so without hesitation. "It seems I am free for the moment," he said, and I nodded. "So, what next?"

I swallowed. I'd wanted to see him, and I had. I'd wanted to apologize to him, and I had. Now, with his body close to mine in the small space at the pattern's heart, I wanted something else entirely. "Now, if you're...amenable, I see if I can take you with me when I will myself elsewhere."

He gave me a somewhat uncertain look. "What 'elsewhere' did you have in mind?"

I swallowed again. "My bedroom." I half wanted to make it a flirtation, a seduction. I'd never known how to seduce men, though. The seduction had been all on the other side, that long ago night, and there hadn't been many since.

His eyes narrowed, his uncertain look turning to something like suspicion. "Is this why you apologized to me, so I'd bed you again?" he asked, the question unexpectedly straightforward, almost crude

I could feel my ears heating, but I shook my head. "No. I apologized because I've been an idiot in the past, and owed you one. The bedding..." I wasn't sure I'd ever blushed this much while dealing with a woman, except perhaps my first few times. "The bedding is only if you want it."

He looked at me then, and I saw that fire sparking in his cold blue eyes. I felt a shiver run down my spine. This Eric was young, I was old. This Eric was a ghost, a being who lived only because I had willed it, and I was real. I should be the one giving such looks, and he the one flushed and uncertain. But just as that long-ago elder brother had effortlessly stirred me to passion, now this echo of him made my pulse begin to pound with only the heat in his gaze.

I caught myself licking my lips and flushed more.

He smiled suddenly and stepped forward, his arms going around me, his lips finding mine, crushing against them in an intense, almost brutally passionate kiss. I was utterly breathless when he released me from it, in a way I'd seldom been with a woman. He smiled at my panting. "I think perhaps I do want it. Let's go."

I put my hand on his shoulder, feeling hard muscle beneath tunic and cloak, and focused my will. I pulled the image of the pattern before my eyes, easy to do here with it all around me, and willed him to come with me to my room. I was no sorcerer, not like my son Merlin, but I'd begun to learn that the pattern could be used in all sorts of unexpected ways.

This way worked just as I hoped, and a moment later Eric and I were both standing in my chambers. His eyes flicked around them, taking everything in.

He didn't comment on my sense of decor, though, he only undid the ruby clasp of his cloak and let it fall. I found my pulse starting to pound faster again as he then removed his sword belt, leaning the sword in a corner not far below where my own Grayswandir hung on the wall. As far as I knew his sword was completely mundane, unlike mine, but I wouldn't put it past Eric to have his own secrets.

That passed through my mind only briefly, though, because Eric didn't halt there. With his sword belt out of the way, it was easy for him to pull his tunic off, and he did, revealing a firmly-muscled chest. I felt my mouth go dry as he continued, kicking off his boots, then undoing his pants and stepping out of them, leaving himself only in close-fitting undershorts.

I couldn't keep my eyes from going to them, noting the partial erection that bulged them up. I swallowed again, my own pants feeling suddenly tight.

Eric's chuckle bordered on mocking, and I flushed again. Goddamit, how did he do this to me after all these years?

"Like what you see?"

I considered a glib response, but couldn't come up with a good enough one, so I only nodded.

Eric chuckled again. "I'd appreciate a view of my own."

"Of course." I swiftly repeated the same stripping act, though I'd no sword to set aside. I rushed through it, unable to keep my eagerness from showing.

Once I was nearly nude, Eric looked me up and down. He frowned faintly. "Damn, Corwin. You look like you've been to hell and back, twice."

"Close enough. The Courts of Chaos. I was a prisoner there until fairly recently."

"The world truly is not what I thought," said Eric, shaking his head. He reached out to me, brushing his fingers over my chest, over muscle that wasn't quite wasted, but was far from toned, over where my ribs still showed just a little too much, over where my hip bones could be felt. Then he slid his arms around my waist and kissed me again, softer this time, but no less passionately. His beard was a coarse scratch against my skin, his lips soft and yet demanding, his body close and warm against mine.

I kissed back, losing myself in it. God, I wanted him.

He seemed to want me as well. His lips were hungry on mine, and his hands roamed my body, exploring over my skin, not seeming held back at all by the fact that I wasn't exactly in my prime. I'd get there again soon, of course, we Amberites recover swiftly. But for now I was glad that he didn't seem to find how out of shape I was off-putting.

Anything but, for as his hungry kiss grew ever deeper he pushed me back until my legs bumped against the edge of the bed. Next thing I knew I was on my back in it, and Eric was climbing atop me. His body was a warm weight, and his lips found mine again, pressing me down to the bed as he kissed me. I let my hands come up to run down his back, feeling the firm muscle there. I felt my blood sing to be beneath him, but some stubborn spark of contrariness couldn't give in to that thrill so easily, so I suddenly dropped one hand and pushed hard, rolling us both over in the big bed, so that I was on top.

He laughed up at me, teeth a flash of white against the dark of his beard, eyes dancing. "Trying to win again, little brother?"

"I never was one to give in easily," I replied, my grin matching his. He wrapped his arms around me and rolled us back the other way, and we wrestled around in the bed for a while until it was pretty thoroughly disarranged and I was breathing hard. Eric, in better fighting trim, wasn't panting nearly so much, which I couldn't keep from finding annoying.

The annoyance was secondary to my intense awareness of his body, though. Particularly right between his legs, where I'd felt a distinct hardness pressing against me through the fabric there whenever I'd come into contact as we wrestled. I knew I was reacting in much the same way, and when he finally got both my wrists in a grip and pinned me down, my urge to protest died when he ground his hips down against mine. Instead a moan escaped me, and I lifted my own hips to that enticing contact.

I still wasn't quite ready to surrender completely, though, so I was mentally braced to try one last attempt at pinning him instead the moment he let go of my wrists.

He only let go of one hand though, and it was to reach between us with the other and give me a lingering grope, which was more than a little distracting.

It got downright difficult to think as Eric slipped his hand inside my undershorts and curled his fingers around my cock directly. All my tensed readiness evaporated into pleasure and another, throatier moan escaped me, I couldn't help it.

"You always were so expressive," murmured Eric, stroking my cock slowly.

"I have been called a poet," I managed to reply.

He chuckled again at that, then let go my other wrist and repositioned himself. He pulled my undershorts down, and his voice still held that chuckle in it as he said, "Let me see if I can wring some poetry from you, then."

"I—Ahh..." My reply was cut off as he lowered his head and licked up the length of my cock. The chuckle wasn't repeated, but my soft sound of pleasure was, for he wrapped his lips around my cock and worked his tongue against the head of it, which sent a jolt of pure bliss through me. "God..."

That did get another chuckle, but it was soon muffled as Eric sank down further on me. His hands rested on my thighs, long, strong fingers gripping, pinning me down almost as effectively as he had by holding my wrists. I was beyond caring about my defeat for the moment, though, for the feel of his mouth on me was amazing. I couldn't help another moan, and another still as he worked at me with expert skill.

I lost myself in it, but no sooner had I given my thoughts fully over to pleasure than he lifted his head and sat back. I knew my expression was dazed and disappointed, and he laughed again, maddeningly. God, how did he have this effect on me?

"Do you want me, dear brother?" he asked teasingly. "Shall I continue here? I might be persuaded to. Or would you like me to satisfy myself with you? I remember how much you liked me in you, that first night."

I drew in a sharp breath, my already pounding pulse racing just that much faster. The memory should have been dim, ancient, but it was not. I could recall exactly what it had felt like the first time he'd entered me, so many years ago, and ever fiber of me yearned to feel it again. A fragment of stubborn pride delayed my response—should I give in to him so easily? Why should it be he who took me, and not I who took him?—but it only delayed.

So as he looked down at me, his eyes hot with passion, his expression intent, I licked my lips and then said, "I cannot help but want you."

"Good," he replied, and punctuated it with another forceful kiss. His hands moved to my undershorts, tugging them down, and I lifted my hips in willing cooperation. He shed his own with equal speed, and now his body was pressing against mine again, his cock a burning hardness along my own, but only for a moment, only for one more passionate kiss, and then he'd climbed off of me and was kneeling beside me on the bed, looking down at me where I lay on my back.

"Do you mean it when you say you want me, Corwin? Show me. Show me how I can have you."

I licked my lips again. I couldn't imagine doing this for any woman, or for any other man either, yet the way he asked it sent fire through my veins and intensified the ache in my loins. I rolled over on the bed, settling myself on my stomach, and spread my legs apart, feeling myself flush hotly as I displayed myself for him. His hands went to my ass, groping and fondling it, then one slipped down to grope beneath me, at my cock. I groaned, followed by a near-whimper when he let go a moment later.

I heard that damnable chuckle again, and anger flared in me. I had the thought that I could get up off the bed, go for Grayswandir, and demand he earn the pleasure he wanted. With all the years I had on him I thought I had a chance of taking him, even in my poor condition.

Momentary anger was chased completely from my head by the touch of his fingers on my ass, pressing between my cheeks. He'd licked them, spittle slick as he pushed them into me, and all I could do then was moan once more.

"You make such sounds," he murmured, his voice thick and breathless, and in that moment I realized that though my desire for him gave him great power over me, his desire gave me just as great a power over him. He bent over me as I was processing that thought, and I felt the head of his cock against me, a wonderful heat and hardness.

I moaned again, giving in to it fully, suddenly able to let myself be eager, to let myself be shameless, knowing that I was driving him just as wild as he was driving me.

"God, Corwin," he said, with deep passion in his voice. He began to sink into me, filling my body, and filling my mind with the pleasure of that hot hardness within me. It was a vulnerable thing, to let my brother inside me, to be the sheath to his sword. I had written enough poetry to understand full well the power that those words had, the violence inherent in what he did, the surrender inherent in what I did. Yet as he came to rest fully within me, bent over me, his breath hot and rapid, I thrilled to give him that power, thrilled at the wonderful ache of him within me, thrilled to know how hotly his want for me burned in every breath that echoed in my ear.

His hips began to move, pulling back and driving himself into me, slowly at first, our bodies getting to know each other, but with ever-increasing speed. I groaned with pleasure as he moved, reveling in it, in the way he filled me, in the weight of his body above me, in the nips and kisses he left on my neck and shoulder as he bent over me. He echoed the sound, thrusting roughly now, letting go of any restraint he might have had.

I clenched down hard on his cock, my whole body tensed as passion raced through me. He groaned again, more deeply, and thrust if anything even faster, even harder in response. I dug my fingers into the blankets beneath me, shoulders bunching, body tensing more as I clenched as hard as I could on him. In that moment I wanted nothing more than to bring him to his peak to make him come, to reach the ultimate expression of the mutual desire that bound us both in each other's power.

"Oh, god... Oh, Corwin!" He came then, sudden and hard, with my name on his lips. I felt it, felt the way his strokes changed as he body spasmed, felt the slick heat of his seed deep within, and I let out a cry of my own as he filled me.

After the moment of fulfillment came the inevitable downward slide, my breath slowing just as his breath in my ear slowed, both our bodies relaxing, his still a warm weight atop mine. He let out a long, contented sigh and I echoed it. A warm bliss filled me, a kind of contented satisfaction. I had not reached my own peak, unlike that first long-ago night. Then I'd come only from the feel of him within me, but my youthful hair-trigger was quite definitely lost to the years.

I didn't mind. I'd made him come, woken passion in him and pushed it to its conclusion, and it was enough for me.

So we rested together, in a contented silence as rare as any precious gem.

Eventually he shifted his weight from me with another sigh and lay beside me in the bed. I shifted to hold him, and we lay together for a little while longer.

At length he said, "So, Corwin, what comes next?"

I gave a small shrug. "What do you want to come next?"

"I am a ghost, here at your summoning," he said softly, and there was a hint of bitterness in it. "Does what I desire matter?"

"Of course! After this, after how we have been here and now, you can ask that?"

Eric snorted. "I know better than to trust a brother. Do you think lying with you changes that?"

That made me sigh myself. "I won't say you're wrong, given our family. Nevertheless, I have no intention of binding you to me."

"You have bound me to you already," he said, his eyes looking deeply into mine. "Tell me, how long will the blood I've had sustain me?"

"I... I cannot put a number of hours on it." I wanted to look away from him, but his eyes held me, and I could not.

"It is measured in hours, then?" His voice was still bitter.

"In days at most," I said softly, regretfully.

He pulled himself from my arms then, and rose. A moment later he was pulling his clothing back on. I watched, knowing what he was doing, and why. I said nothing, for I could think of nothing to say. I began donning my own clothing too, though. He gave me a look, but also said nothing.

Dressed, we left my rooms and began to make our way down the halls. Eric led and I followed, but I could have led as well, I'd walked the path he took barely an hour before.

After our long, silent trek we stood once more in the room of the pattern, the thing that in a certain sense defined our family, its blue-white glow painting both our faces with cold, evil shadows.

At the last moment, unable to let Eric go without even venturing an argument, I said, "Any blood of Amber will sustain you, it need not be mine."

He turned, only a single step away from the pattern now, and shook his head. "Thank you, Corwin, for this moment of life after death. Thank you for an apology offered to a ghost. But I could never bear to depend on any of my kin in such a way. You of all people must understand that."

I bowed my head then, for I did. Were I in his place it was very likely that I would choose just as he chose now.

His eyes were fixed intently on mine, and he smiled darkly. "If you find you cannot bear to live without me, though, I'm certain you know how to summon me again." 

I bared my teeth at the sudden surge of desire that rushed through me. Even now, even ending his existence in stubborn pride, he still could best me. I had wanted to lay his ghost, and now I knew it would haunt—and tempt—me more than ever, damn him.

He grinned at me, that flash of white on dark. Then he took one long stride backward onto the pattern and was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. If you'd like to see me talk about writing, my works in progress, other creative endeavors, and my life in general, check out [my Dreamwidth blog](https://bladespark.dreamwidth.org/).


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